ORIGINS OF RELIGION, PART 8: Indoctrination and refusal to accept new knowledge

Millions of atheist scientists and other rational freethinkers know full well, through the application of unbiased commonsense and the results of millions of complex experiments and the calculations of astute experimental and theoretical physicists, that we humans inhabit a tiny part of what is a vast godless universe of immense age; and that we have good reason to infer that gods exist nowhere but in the imaginations, stories and lies of faith-driven men.

So how can bible-believers seriously defend their ever-shrinking part of the world against the supreme logic produced by elite scientists when there is no case to answer? Why are there faith-believers at all?

A principal reason is that once the fictions of faith get into people’s heads it is difficult to be rid of them. Indoctrinated when young, they indoctrinate the young of their own and of others, and the cycle of merciless irrationality continues.

These dogmatic bigots never let go—and that is because they never listen, their minds are already made up, and they are incapable of understanding and absorbing new knowledge no matter how thoroughly well-tested and proven the latter may be.

Only freethinkers and scientists see the universe clearly and correctly for its materiality and man’s place in it as an evolutionary accident but a marvel nonetheless.

Religionists sink inside the mental quagmire and nightmare of their own making for it is philosophically incontestable, when the evidence is well presented and the listener has a high enough level of intelligence and freedom of thought, that gods exist nowhere but inside people’s heads—and that is that.
Terence Meaden. 27 August 2008. Planet Atheism/ Enlightened Observer

Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge did a considerable amount of sociological research into religion and, more specifically, the formation of quasi-religious organizations or cults, and how they recruit followers. They developed the notion of 'compensators' offered by religious organizations. Basically, the cult or religion will say something like this: "believe what we tell you, behave and act how we tell you, and you will be rewarded with acceptance by the group and eternal bliss after death!" - of course this is a simplification and the actual compensators will vary depending upon the particular group or cult.

People who are in the comfortable position, as most of us probably are, to see that the compensators are hollow will not be convinced to give up a part of our freedom for some nebulous reward after death. However, many religions, and certainly cults, aim their compensator big guns at people in desperate, dire straits: the homeless, the abused, the sick, the recently bereaved, the undereducated, etc. If you are desperate, then it is much easier to become brainwashed by organized religion or cults.

Kevin's summary is broadly correct regarding my eldest daughter.
My wife and two other children are good atheists, but that daughter (now 40) was led astray by what amounts to a cult in the way you describe. She has had 10 years of it, having on the way married another of its members. She works for nothing---or rather just for food and lodging and giving services to the cult----the charity REMAR. And it began when she felt desperate, having broken from her boyfriend. Of course, the god-seeds were sown in childhood, at school. ...... If only the school had been wholly devoid of religious fiction..........